Striking results as to the prevalence of sexual violence for both males and females
The CDC released its latest survey on rape and intimate partner violence today, and the news is troubling. According to the latest government data, nearly 1 in 5 women have been raped or experienced attempted rape by men, while 1 in 4 reported having been beaten by an intimate partner. Linda Degutis, the director of the study told the New York Times that the results were “striking” and “surprising.” “I don’t think we’ve really known that it was this prevalent in the population”, she said.
The study also makes it clear that men can be victims too. 1 in 71 men reported having been raped – many when they were small boys. 1 in 7 had been physically battered by a lover or spouse. Interestingly, for the first time a national survey of male victims of rape distinguished being “forced to penetrate” a male or female abuser from other forms of sexual assault.
And among males it is little boys, not adults or teens, who are at the greatest risk. 28% of male victims reported that they were raped when they were 10 or younger, while only 12% of female victims were sexually assaulted by that age. For boys, the most vulnerable years seem to be between 6-10, while for girls, the most statistically dangerous period of their lives coincides with puberty. This doesn’t mean that preteen girls aren’t victimized; it does mean that the onset of adolescence offers much statisical greater protection for boys than it does for their sisters.
Though men remain the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of rape, the new research makes it more evident than ever that men are also its victims. Despite recent claims about a proliferation of female rapists, the CDC found that “male rape victims and male victims of non-contact unwanted sexual experiences reported predominantly male perpetrators.” Close to 50% of all stalking victimizations that men experienced were also perpetrated by men.
It can’t be said often enough: men are victims too. Male suffering in the aftermath of sexual assault is as real and profound as what women endure. But at the same time, there’s no point in denying the realities that this study drives home: men are the primary perpetrators of sexual violence, particularly against preteen boys and adolescent girls. For the sake of the sons and daughters who are equally deserving of our protection, let’s design prevention programs accordingly.
—
photo: uaeincredible / Flickr
As the admin of this web site is working, no question very
soon it will be well-known, due to its feature contents.
I wonder how much confirmation bias is at work here with you Hugo. I would expect better from you when it comes to not playing the word games with the word “rape”. There are still some states where the law makes it impossible for a female to commit rape and the language the CDC used here also skewed the numbers. But I will humor you and look at only female victims of sexual violence who reported a female only perpetrator. The numbers work out to be 4,403,010. That is 4 million almost 4.5 million who reported a female only perpetrator.… Read more »
As usual, the comments are far more informative than the articles. Thanks everyone.
There are times when I deeply fear that violence is a feature of the human operating system, and not a bug. No matter man on man, man on woman, woman on woman, woman on man, firm on infirm, old on young, youth on the aged, gay on straight and so forth, tribe on tribe, country on country, we seem to delight in harming each other while justifying our actions, our cultures, our sexes, races, non profits or corporations. The truth of the matter seems to be that we like it. We seem to relish it especially here on the web… Read more »
Julie
the story here is that people are abusing stats in order to cover-up rape of men and boys.
My point, which I’m sure you may not care about, is that humans all seem to relish violence against each other. That includes women on man, did you read my post? The story of the post may be about statistics but to me the meta story is that no matter how peaceful the intentions of people making forums for people to gather and discuss, no matter how peaceful the intentions of laws intended to protect kids, no matter….50K years going and we still really love destroying each other. So it must be a feature. Saying that I feel certain it’s… Read more »
Julie, it is so discouraging. It also often feels ironic to me how verbally abusive people can be on the internet. I understand the need to turn the pressure valve a little to the right and let off some steam, but what really interests me is how many people are downright vicious. Male and female. And most of them, anonymously. I get exasperated at the black an white thinking…”all men,” “100% of women,” etc. And the WORST thing? I think some people exaggerate for effect and because it’s a whole lot cheaper than therapy, but I think a bunch of… Read more »
Lori and Julie, I so love your voices here.
The best understanding of violence I’ve found, is “Violence: A national epidemic” by James Gilligan. It’s amazing. Do you know of this book? He discusses various “theories of violence”. It’s just our biology is one of them.
I’ll have to check that out, thanks!
Yes but Julie, the big story here is that people from a certain political organisation have an agenda to abuse statistics to lie about and cover up abuse and rape.
Can you see that as being a really big deal?
Would you change your position of it was abuse and rape of women and girls that was being covered up?
What is wrong with you that you are glossing over the covering up of abuse and rape?
Not glossing over a darn thing. Totally acknowledging there is a problem.
Julie, while violence may be part of human nature, it’s not the only part, and violence has been on the decrease across more or less all recorded history. Now if that statement sounds strange to you or false, it might be in part because of the success of making violence unacceptable also tends to highlight it more when it does happen.
Seriously if you want to feel upset about a problem facing the world, I’d pick global warming 🙂 because “violence” is having its ass kicked.
Book on this topic:
http://www.amazon.com/Better-Angels-Our-Nature-Violence/dp/0670022950
TED short video summary:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ramBFRt1Uzk
Ron – as a third party, I feel the need to point out that the term “What is wrong with you…” is seen a personal attack. There is *nothing wrong* with either you or Julie. You are merely disagreeing.
Personally, when someone says something like “What is wrong with you?” I instinctively have a hard time truly hearing and respecting what they legitimately have to say. I really want to hear you both, but the personal attacks don’t belong in this conversation.
Joanna
The political movement and its followers that cover up female perpetrated abuse and fail to see the problem – are the sore thumb here, not the people that are pointing out this very serious problem, their positions are morally correct.
Do you get a free pass on this because you are women, or feminists?
Yes says TGMP, yes say feminists, but don’t expect everyone else to play along.
Examining the tables on page 18 and 19 in the CDC report the following stands out: % of Women who has been raped(1) in the last 12 months: 1.1% (estimated to 1,270,000) % of Men who has been “Made to penetrate someone else”(2) in the last 12 months: 1.1% (estimated to 1,267,000). (Seriously; click on the link to report in Hugo’s article and open the full report and go on page 17-19 and read for yourself). So what’s the difference between these two categories? Let’s see how the CDC themselves defines them in their report: 1) Rape is defined as… Read more »
Although as with prison rape the data to my mind suggests that more male victims are repeatedly raped. That means that for example had the survey asked “were you raped in the last month?” far more men would have said yes.
Presumably women are raping men repeatedly within marriage / partnerships and this rape is ignored to a far higher degree than if the genders were reversed. A very easily predictable result based on the available anecdotal data.
My mother and the older of my two sisters got men drunk in order to get pregnant. These are both rapes under current law in my state. My mother was attempting to escape her rapist father. My sister was afraid of being left on the shelf. That sister brags openly about what she did.
Anybody want to bet those are the only instances?
Alcohol related rape laws could well turn out to be a real Pandora’s Box if men actually understood that it WAS rape.
DavidByron: All respondents of the CDC survey were non-institutionalised which means that this survey probably underreports male rape since a large section of men which are most at risk for rape were not asked. Gwallan is right and I believe that is one of the reasons why we see that the disparity in the lifetime versus last 12 months columns. More and more men breaks free of the notion that men always should welcome sex and that there is no such thing as unwanted sex. Another one is that it’s becoming increasingly more accepted for women be the sexual aggressor/initiator… Read more »
Yeah I know they (mostly) skip prison rape. My point was the maths. if you look at the ratio of lifetime rape to rape reported in last 12 months then for women it’s what (from memory), like 17:1 ? but for men more like 4:1. And if you just multiplied the 12 month figure by an adult lifespan you’d expect 40-50:1. The reason the lifetime figure is much smaller is that a lot of people are being raped many times. Like in prison. And that’s especially true of men. Gwallan’s comment doesn’t suggest a kind of rape that repeats regularly.… Read more »
@Tamen & David…The older demographic would be far less likely to understand their experience to be sexual coercion. This will distort longer term analyses.
An excellent point.
Yes the lifetime results have the effect of multiplying the representation of older generations.
Another suggestion I heard elsewhere is that the rape of women used to be much greater in the past (instead of the rate of male rape being less).
And for the record, while I understand that GMP has a policy of disallowing critical comments or anything discussing male victims, you honestly cannot have an open, honest discussion if you keep throwing comments into moderation.
Comments go into moderation when they are long, have multiple links, and include trigger words. Also, we do not allow personal attacks on our writers, which is why there is the moderation policy. However, we get about 4,000 comments a month, and cannot moderate them all. So sometimes it seems random as to which comments get moderated, but we try to put them up as soon as possible.
We DO NOT disallow comments about male victims, under any circumstances.
Lisa, I understand that long posts or posts with multiple links or trigger words will end up in moderation. However, my second post was short and contained nothing I can see to be a trigger word or any links and it ended up in moderation. That is not the first time that has happened, and I am not the only person that has happened to. I do not know how the moderation works here, whether it is decided by everyone or by the individual contributors to post articles here, the latter of which would explain why I only get moderated… Read more »
Jacob, the moderation is done technologically, which means there’s no one person who sits there and decides which are moderated or not. But again, today was a maelstrom of comments — close to 1,000 today alone. We get to them as fast as we can. I really don’t think we held any of yours up for more than an hour. But I’d say about 60% of the comments get moderated, 40% go through, and some of those get “flagged” afterwards. But really, we are doing nothing to your comments in particular that we aren’t doing to others. I’m not sure… Read more »
Then could you please take a bit more care in who you permit to tell that story.
Feeling silenced(or being silenced) is triggering for a survivor of the wrong kind of abuse.
I don’t want to speak for Toy Soldier, but I did want to put that out there.
Lisa, I understand that the moderation is done technologically. I use the same kind of moderation on my blog. What I am saying is that it appears that my comments are specifically being held in moderation regardless of their content. It is also possible that every comment made on this article automatically goes into moderation. I understand that GMP gets a lot of comments, many of them less than polite, and I can understand using stringent moderation. I do not particularly care about that per se, nor do I feel silenced by it, as one person suggested. I just find… Read more »
Ok — I figured it at least partly out — sorry Jacob. My name is set to be flagged — if someone is personally attacking me, I need to know right away. For the record, you have never once come close to doing that. But comments of yours that mention me will be put into moderation. We are working on a better, more customizable system but for now that is the way it works.
Schwyzer, why do I get the feeling that you did not expect anyone to actually read the report? Despite recent claims about a proliferation of female rapists, the CDC found that “male rape victims and male victims of non-contact unwanted sexual experiences reported predominantly male perpetrators.” Since this thinly veiled insult was aimed at me, I will respond. I made no “claims.” I cited several well-researched articles and studies that showed a high prevalence of female-on-male sexual violence. Granted, either you or some other editor conveniently removed the links to those sources, but one can easily find the papers and… Read more »
This is simply a lie.
“Despite recent claims about a proliferation of female rapists, the CDC found that “male rape victims and ….reported predominantly male perpetrators.”
The survey actually said that 79.2% of the men saying they were forced into sex (“forced penetration”) said women did it. Of course the other 20% were not necessarily men; might have been multiple rapists.
You may be right in reporting what they SAID. if so they are lying.
Read the wording of what constitutes rape, envelopment isn’t rape under their title. Envelopment is under the other sexual assault category where nearly 1 in 2 women and 1 in 5 men have experiences sexual assault. if 79.2% of the men saying they were forced to penetrate said women did it, then that’s what, 1 in 26 men who were forced to penetrate women? up to 5million men, a sure jump in the number previously thought of female rapists. I actually thought this was a great survey until that was pointed out, no wonder this survey is being used to… Read more »
The summary of this survey lies to low-ball male rape victims and support the feminist sexist propaganda on rape. This is the first survey to ask men if they were forced into sex. They said yes at the same rate that women did (over last 12 months — 1.1%) But the survey refused to call what happened to men “rape”. It lied and you repeated that lie in your article. Please read the actual data, not just the summary. 79.2% of the men raped (but not called rape) said women raped them. “men remain the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of… Read more »
“Approximately 1 in 4 women and nearly 1 in 7 men in the U.S. have experienced severe physical violence by an intimate partner at some point in their lifetime.”
Thats *alot.* O.O for both genders. I haven’t read the report yet, but I wonder how they defined severe.
Uhmmmm – sorry – not sure how to say this….. ahm… oooopppsss… “I wonder how they defined severe” “In this report, severe physical violence includes being hurt by pulling hair, being hit with something hard, being kicked, being slammed against something, attempts to hurt by choking or suffocating, being beaten, being burned on purpose and having a partner use a knife or gun against the victim. While slapping, pushing and shoving are not necessarily minor physical violence, this report distinguishes between these forms of violence and the physical violence that is generally categorized as severe.” Seems Reasonable Enough? Actually –… Read more »
I have spent sometime reading the whole report ( all 124 pages ) and it makes very interesting reading. The survey and findings are presented as authoritative – but the admission of gaps existing and the prevalence of gaps that are so easy to find does indicate that yet again the report should be marked “Handle With Care”. I am concerned that as to how those involved in the study and report decided how “gap” was to be defined, and even NOT Defined, in relation to present assumptions and they did not consider some very basic assumptions and presumptions which… Read more »
All excellant points, you should send them on to the organisation that conducted the study.
Peter – if they want some input they can pay the going rate!
I am aware of just how easy it is for Organizations of any size to be well intentioned but also blinded by those intentions.
A perfection of means, and confusion of aims, seems to be our main problem.
Albert Einstein
Yeah the lack of any figures for male rape victims being raped by penetration was pretty obvious. They did it by excluding figures for groups less than or equal to 20 and then deliberately interviewing fewer men. The old NVAWS had men raped (by penetration) at about 1/3 the rate of women but this survey simply says “no data” which of course gets counted as “zero”. This is again for the last 12 months question, which is more reliable. But on the whole I aplaude the methodology as a vast improvement over NVAWS for reporting male victims. Because it actually… Read more »
That was forensic MediaHound. Forensic and wonderful
Thank you, Media Hound, for actually reading the report and raising those important questions. We are all so quick to accept two-minute soundbites that rarely tell the true story.
The CDC also say that women initiate domestic violence the majority of the time, and that the strongest indicator of a woman being injured by DV, is her own violence.
h t t p://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2005.079020
The problem is more complex than some would have us believe.
Yes, in any other fight “who started it?” is the question of who is to blame. But feminism has taught us all that women have a right to assault men. That factoid is well known among DV researchers and yet universally pooh-poohed as irreverent.
“Approximately 1 in 21 men (4.8%) reported having been made to penetrate someone else in his lifetime (Table 2.2).” “”Nearly 1 in 2 women (44.6%) and 1 in 5 men (22.2%) experienced sexual violence victimization other than rape at some point in their lives (Tables 2.1 and 2.2).” I gotta hand it to people that report on these stats, they gloss over these 2 lines from that report. What this suggests is that the levels of male victimization are MUCH higher than previously though, even the female levels are higher than any other stat I have seen. They don’t seem… Read more »
its worse than you think. And yes its clearly a deliberate campaign to inflate female rape victims and low-ball male victims. People highlight the lifetime percent to further hide male victimisation but the more accurate measure is the 12 month prior percentage where men report being raped more often than women do. Women are NOT the majority of rape victims; men are. This is the first time a survey has bothered to ask men if they were raped and its still very biased to female victims (presumably intentionally) but immediately we get a result that more men are raped than… Read more »
Glad to see the new report out – but there still needs to be some work on the language. “Though men remain the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of rape…” It seems that the conversation is to change! About time – but a few tweaks to language may prove helpful! That “overwhelming” trope is so unhelpful and leaves people feeling un-powered, disenfranchised. How about “Though men remain “statistically” the majority of perpetrators of rape…” That way people can be encouraged to work on the numbers and not be overwhelmed by the math! If Overwhelming is to be used one would expect… Read more »
The CDC is about as reputable source as one could find. Thanks for digesting and presenting the findings. It’s helpful that male victims are being acknowledged, and helpful that accurate statistics about victims, perpetrators, and ages of vulnerability are laid out clearly. Now for the harder part–decreasing such a disturbingly high level of violence.
It seems the CDC is reputable when people agree with their findings… Ironically, the CDC is the source (http://www.cdc.gov/ace/year.htm) of the study that Hugo dismisses as “an outlier” here when drawing attention to its finding that: “Contact CSA (Child Sexual Abuse) was reported by 16% of males and 25% of females. Men reported female perpetration of CSA nearly 40% of the time, and women reported female perpetration of CSA 6% of the time. ” http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15894146?dopt=Abstract And I might turn the tables again, by asking, why does the gender of the victim merit such focus and emphasis? Don’t we care about… Read more »